


Poetry

by sadlittletiger



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Body Horror, Consensual Sex, Gentle Sex, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Multi, Post-RE6, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-08 03:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15921830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlittletiger/pseuds/sadlittletiger
Summary: Piers struggles with his recovery and discovers who he really is through his changing relationship with his Captain.





	1. Fire and Ice

_Some say the world will end in fire,_

_Some say in ice._

_From what I've tasted of desire_

_I hold with those who favor fire._

_But if it had to perish twice,_

_I think I know enough of hate_

_To say that for destruction ice_

_Is also great_

_And would suffice._

Robert Frost

* * *

 

_“Hey.”_

Muted beeps.Cold, dry air.The tightness of tape on the skin of his arms, the burn of needles jammed in every vein.

He breathed - a deep, pained exhale through his nose.His right eye cracked open at the familiar voice; the reconstructed lid still a raw pink.He winced, his hips moving.One knee was drawn to the side, his foot kicked out in discomfort and his left hand balled up in the stiff, sterile sheets.His jaw clenched and then relaxed as best it could with the wires holding it shut.He swallowed, and his throat was on fire.

He was lucky though, right?

After all, he was alive.

_Is_ alive.

... was alive.

Chris fought through his own tears.“Hey kid,” he tried again, his voice cracking.“So... they say you’re gonna be okay.”

He dragged in another ragged breath, his nostrils flaring, and then he closed his eye again, sore brow furrowing.Great swaths of flesh down his right flank were still flayed open.Wet gauze laid over the parts of his body that had been grafted.Chris took in all of it - the lacerations and the gouges where the surgeon’s vulture scalpels had carved out the havoc the virus had wreaked on him, the arm that was slowly rebuilding itself through stem cell therapy, the agonized writhing...

Chris looked up at the wretched hard fluorescents.He felt for Piers’ good hand and held it.“You’ll be alright, kid.” 

He came every day to see him.

He was the _only_ person who came to see Piers.

* * *

The knock startled him.He craned his neck, his head tilted at a strange angle, the skin on his throat still new and stiff.He held his place in the book on his lap - _New Hampshire_.

“What’s that?”Chris asked.He took up nearly the entire doorway, backlit by the ugly white light of the hospital hallway.It was a picture out of a comic book - the triumphant, invincible hero visiting his poor, mortal sidekick. Piers looked up, and then away shamefully, trying to turn his face to the into shadows of his room.

“Captain,” he said.The reverence was still there, hiding in his weak voice.

He listened to Chris’s footsteps, growing closer, until he felt Chris lifting the book from his hand.He studied the cover and frowned, dogearred the page Piers had been on, and then began leafing through the poetry collection.

Piers watched him read, slowly slipping his mangled arm under the thin blanket.He tried desperately to hide all that was wrong with him.He couldn’t bear the thought... Chris seeing him... like a monster.It made him nauseous.

“You got a favorite?”He asked.

Piers glanced at him, his gaze meeting Chris’s and then averting shyly.“Yeah.”

Chris pursed his lips, has eyes skimming over one page, flipping to the next.He waited a beat.“Which one?”

Piers arched his back to ease the pain that had settled low on his spine.He gently took the book back from Chris.He searched the index and found it, pointed to it.Chris nodded as he read the title.

“ _Fire and Ice_ , huh?” 

Piers stared at his lips, the way they mouthed the words.Chris read slowly, haltingly.He came to final line and hesitated on the last word, the beginnings of it forming on his tongue, pressed to the back of his teeth.He didn’t know the word.Piers saw all of it.

“Suffice,” he said.Chris looked up then.Their eyes met.“That word - it’s _suffice_.”

“Yeah,” Chris agreed.He cleared his throat, uncomfortably.“Which uh... which one do you agree with?”

“I dunno.Maybe... both?”Chris listened.“You know... I’ve been through both.I think, for me, it’s a really personal notion, right?Like maybe it isn’t about the end of the world... but about your own death.Spiritually, emotionally, physically, I guess.And that part about perishing twice... You know, we all die a few times in our lives, don’t we?It’s just a matter of how we come back from it.”He watched Chris’s expression for recognition, for response.

Chris narrowed his eyes.He didn’t reply.

Piers looked away again, feeling hot blood rushing to his ears, knowing well they were pink with embarrassment.That _always_ happened.He cursed himself.Why would he say all of that... to Chris Redfield, no less?His goddamn captain.What the hell had he even said?How could he be so... stupid?

“How are you gonna come back?”Chris asked softly.

Piers held his breath and begged his thundering heart to stop it’s horrible pounding.Eventually, he just shrugged.He had no answers for his captain.

Chris clasped his hands in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees.He hung his head.“It’s not the end for you.”

Piers snorted.“Right...”

“It’s not.Really.There’s other callings out there.There’s other causes that need you,” he said. 

“They fired me.”

Chris sat back, his mouth opening and then closing as he tried to think of what to say.“Oh... they didn’t _fire_ you, Piers, they --”

“They gave me a fucking medal and a flag... And they told me I was discharged...”He looked up, grimacing.It ached so much, especially as he said it aloud to _this_ man... this _savior_.

“Piers, it was honorable.You were... you were maimed in the line of duty... They didn’t... They’ll take care of you,” he whispered.

Piers shook his head sadly. 

“They will,” Chris argued.“You’re a hero.”He smiled, even laughed a bit at the end.His hand was warm on Piers’s shoulder.He rubbed - almost tenderly, and his callused fingers strayed up to the nape of his neck.He shook him playfully then, until Piers had no choice but to look at him.Chris smiled again.“You’re a hero, kid.A fuckin’ Purple Heart-wearing, card-carrying, honorably-discharged, ass-kicking hero.”

Piers looked away, blinking back bitter tears of disappointment.

But Chris’s hand remained there, on the back of his neck, one of his fingers in his hair.It burned.It kept his heart racing.It... was wrong. 

It was right.

And suddenly, it was gone.Piers inhaled sharply at the loss.

“They’re letting you outta here soon, right?”Chris leaned back in the plastic chair, two legs off the ground.

“Yeah.A few days.”He closed the book and held it with his good hand, the other hidden again beneath the covers.Out of sight, where it belonged.

“Gonna stay with family or... girlfriend or something?” 

Piers sighed.“Nah.”

“Why not?” 

“I’m not... I’m not close with my parents.”Piers paused.“And my ex-wife doesn’t want shit to do with me.”

Chris pretended to adjust the sleeve of his own t-shirt.“Fine by you, right?”

Piers almost cracked a smile.“Yeah.I guess so.”

“I’m heading out soon.”

Piers nodded, staring at the cover of _New Hampshire_.He traced the letters of Robert Frost’s embossed name with his fingers.“It’s late.You oughta head home now.Before it gets dark.”He immediately cringed.How lame. _Before it gets dark._ Like the captain was a school girl.

He hoped that the reason for all this verbal stumbling was the pain meds.It was humiliating.

“I don’t mean tonight.I mean... I’m leaving.Bought some property a while ago.West Virginia,” Chris said.

Piers frowned.He tried - he really _had_ tried to stop the expression before it surfaced.But it was so overpowering...“Oh,” was all he could manage.

Chris picked at the hem of the bed sheet then.“Yeah.Fixer-upper.Needs a fuckin’ ton of work.Gonna be rough for a while.”He looked up and then off.He was lost, imagining something.He made a big gesture with his hand.“So much land though... acres and acres up there in the mountains.Hills and trees and grass.Looks like the sun sets right there... Right in the front yard.Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen...”

Piers went there with him, to that piece of heaven on earth.Chris was a lot of things, but an exaggerator wasn’t one of them.And if he said it was the most beautiful place in the world... it had to be the most beautiful place in world.

“Can’t wait to get started, ya know?Get my hands dirty.”

Piers tried to smile, his eyes downcast, his fingers still playing with the book - pinching the edge, slipping under the library’s plastic jacket.

“I could use some help,” Chris said quietly.“If you don’t have anything goin’ on.I mean... I’m sure you got plans for when you get out.”

And as quickly as it had been stalled, Piers’s heart swelled, almost to bursting.He didn’t... couldn’t speak.He just stared up as Chris stood to leave.

He stood silhouetted in the doorway again - the consummate hero.

“Think about it, kid.”He looked back as left.“See you tomorrow.”

Piers listened to the nurses chatting animatedly at the desk in the hall.He listened to his roommate snoring in the bed that was separated from his by a curtain with a flower print. 

He listened to his heart for the first time in his life.


	2. Remark

 

_A Man may make a Remark -_   
_In itself - a quiet thing_   
_That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark_   
_In dormant nature - lain -_   
  
_Let us divide - with skill -_   
_Let us discourse - with care -_   
_Powder exists in Charcoal -_   
_Before it exists in Fire -_

_"A Man may make a Remark" - Emily Dickinson_

* * *

 

_**September, 2013.** _

The drive took about a day from D.C. They didn’t talk much on the way down. They didn’t need to. Chris turned up Lynyrd Skynyrd and Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver and sang along. Sometimes Piers knew the song... other times, it was a relic from a time before his twenty-four years.

Chris drove a 1995 Jeep Wrangler. He’d taken everything off but the roll bars. It handled poorly, and the gears were creaky when they shifted, the second missing entirely; the cloth seats were torn and the warm air blowing back on their faces smelled like burning transmission fluid. Piers liked it. It made him feel whole. He’d left his own dull little import with a neighbor and made no plans to pick it up.

In the backseat, Chris’s old retriever laid on their bags and barked at every stop light. Sometimes, Chris’s elusive sense of humor cracked through his stony facade - the dog’s name, for instance, was Romero. Piers would have smiled at that, but smiling hurt his mouth. So he didn’t.

The dog jumped all over them at rest stops and raced across the open greens like it had all of it’s life to live.

“Gonna suck when I gotta put him down,” Chris said as they stood, leaning against the Jeep. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his ripped jeans and squinted, watching as Romero chased a squirrel. It chirped at him from the trunk of a big tree, it’s tail whipping.

Piers glanced at him. “Toughest ride you’ll ever take.” He screwed and unscrewed a bottle of Cherry Coke, over and over. Chris’s shoulder brushed against his. Piers stepped away, just a bit. He hoped Chris wouldn’t notice.

“Kinda disgusting of me,” Chris said suddenly.

“Hmm?” The cherry Coke swished back and forth.

“It’s disgusting… that I can mow down a hundred men… have a good night’s sleep.  But the thought of my dog… I just…”  He didn’t finish.

Next to them, a young family in a sedan pulled up.  A little girl jumped out of the back, her baby brother struggling in his carseat.  Chris nodded to her as she skipped past, running up the sidewalk to the vending machines.  

He turned and found Piers bent over the hood of the Jeep, pretending to be studying something intently.  He looked at Chris, and then away - shamed again.  Chris frowned in the sunlight.

“It’s not that bad, Piers,” he said.

“I’m a fucking monster.”  He ground it out between clenched teeth, spit it out so that he could feel the burn of each word. “Look at me, Captain.”

Chris shook his head in disagreement, but his eyes stayed on his scuffed Nikes.

“Look at me, goddammit,” he hissed.

Chris’s jaw set.

They stared at each other.  Piers’s left eye was now forever an eerie pearl, it’s pupil contracted to a reptilian slit in the glare of the sunlight; his face was a map of pink scar tissue - gouged out and stapled back together like the doctors had been playing with a doll.  It wasn’t their fault, really... they’d had so much to reconstruct... so little left to work with.

Romero bounded up then and scrambled into the backseat.

“You gotta take a leak or anything?”  Chris asked, keys in his hand.

“I just did.  You were there,” Piers answered, his tone short.

“You wanna drive?”  Chris tried again.

“No.”  He opened the passenger side door and pulled his sweatshirt hood all the way up.

It was hard to drive when you were hiding your face.

* * *

 

“You want anything?” He pushed the cranky gear shift into park.

Piers sank low in the passenger seat. They’d pulled off the county road to stop at an old convenient store when Chris had announced they were “close to home”. It was a lopsided little building with one gas pump and five pick-ups parked out front.

Exactly the bumfuck kind of place you’d expect to get hassled at when your face looked like it had gone a few rounds with a pit bull.

Chris waited for him to respond... but he just sulked. “Alright. Well, I’m gonna run in. I don’t have anything to eat up at the house.”

Piers licked his lips. “What? Don’t want me to go in with you?” He didn’t meet Chris’s surprised face, but he imagined it as he stared at the dashboard.

“Piers... That’s not what --” Chris started.

“No. It’s fine, sir. I wouldn’t wanna be seen with me either.” Piers waved his bad hand, still half-formed. It might be that way for the rest of his life - the stem cell specialists and the genetic scientists and the plastic surgeons and the million doctors didn’t know, couldn’t say. They considered it a success though - his claw-hand and his useless arm. A medical triumph, they called it. A break-through, they said.

It all made Piers wonder what a failure might look like to them.

Chris grabbed him by his shirt collar then, wrenched him almost from the passenger seat. Piers gasped - everything moving too fast for a reaction. Chris brought him inches from his face.

“I’m gettin’ sick of this passive-aggressive pity party bullshit,” he growled. “You wanna sit here and feel sorry for yourself, go ahead. Don’t pull that with me though. Now either you get the fuck out of this Jeep and walk your dusty ass in that store with me, or you shut the hell up.” Chris breathed. “I’m not gonna beg you to be a man.” He paused. “You didn’t beg me, did you?”

He shoved Piers away then, shoved him back into his seat. They stared at each other, on fire with their anger - Chris at Piers, Piers at everything.

Furious, he reached into the backseat and snatched up his BSAA ball cap. He tugged the brim down over his eyes, his jaw clenching and unclenching all the while. He slid out of the seat and stomped up to the store.

Chris watched him. And smiled.

* * *

 

The rednecks stood around the counter, their red and black plaid shirts dirty with mud. One of them had a shotgun slung over his shoulder as they talked with the clerk at the register. Piers kept his head down and started up the food aisle.

“I’m tellin’ you, Kerry, that buck hada be one-fifty. Biggest sumobitch I seen in years,” the tallest one said.

Piers listened as he browsed cans of soup and beans and vegetables. He picked up a homemade jar of pickled okra.

“Sure it was, boss,” the guy behind the counter laughed. Tall Tale grumbled and the rest of the group chuckled at whatever he’d said, their feet shuffling on the cheap linoleum floor. They were quiet then - no doubt watching him. Piers yanked on his hat, his shoulders up to his ears. He tried very hard to disappear.

The bell at the top of the door jingled again as Chris walked in. The men at the counter nodded to him, and he raised a hand in greeting. He joined Piers with a basket.

“You hear Jen’s in a family way again?” The one with the shotgun asked. A few grunts of disapproval went up.

“I dunno what went wrong with that girl. Her ma must be rollin’ in her grave,” Tall Tale added. “Who’s the daddy this time?”

“Heard it was Tommy Junior,” the clerk stopped to spit in a bowl behind the counter. “O’er there on Johnny Cake Ridge. You know the one.”

Chris knocked half the shelf into the basket - Cambell’s chicken noodle soup, canned corn, peaches in syrup, a suspiciously packaged bag of Eight O’Clock coffee. He tossed a loaf of white bread in too. Piers looked at the expiration date skeptically. Chris had a stomach of steel - his ability to eat anything was legendary in their troop.

He didn’t fair much better at the rattling cooler in the back of the store. He chose his drinks indiscriminately - a twelve-pack of Coke, a gallon of artificially-flavored fruit punch, some non-dairy creamer.

“You want anything else?” Chris asked. Piers looked up at him and then away. He shook his head. The locals had fallen quiet again, watching the two of them with more interest than was comfortable. He followed Chris up to check out, his hands hidden in the hoodie, his eyes downcast, his heart pounding.

The hunting buddies stepped aside for them, but only enough so that they could dump their things on the counter. They hovered disconcertingly close, and Piers was conscious of every breath, every second that passed. Chris ignored them and emptied the basket while the rednecks judgmentally looked over everything they’d picked up. Piers stared at Chris’s back and tried to swallow - he found he couldn’t. It was as if his throat had closed in on itself.

The clerk spit again and began hen-pecking each item into the register.

“You boys ain’t from round here. Where ya headed?” Tall Tale asked, his arms crossed. He looked down at them - which was no small feat as Chris measured in at a little over six feet.

“Just bought a house - up on Northman,” Chris replied without even honoring Tall Tale with a glance.

“Eric’s old cabin, huh?” Shotgun cut in.

“That’s the one,” Chris said, nodding.

“Place is a wreck, in’t it?” The clerk searched a can of beef stew for the hand-written price tag.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Chris rubbed his face, exhausted by the thought of it.

“There’s a True Value up on Compton Road. Ol’ Roy closes shop on Sundays though,” the younger man in a lumberjack hat told them. He kept staring at Piers’s face, thoughtful and hard.

“Thanks. We’ll check it out.” Chris smiled weakly and pulled his wallet from his back pocket.

“Twenty-four big ones.” The clerk started bagging the food. Piers tried to swallow again.

Chris leafed through the bills, pulling out three tens. Tall Tales glared at him, tilting his head to better see the I.D. tucked beneath a plastic pocket.

“You military?” He asked.

Chris sighed. He handed the cash over. “B.S.A.A.”

“B.S.A.A.?” Shotgun perked up. “You them boys over in China, right?”

Chris shrugged, like it was no big deal.

“You seen combat?” The beer-guzzling overweight stereotype of the group asked.

“Got back a coupla months ago,” Chris waited for his change and Piers gathered up their grocery bags. He frowned at the one that was ripping.

“Lemme git you another one, boy,” the clerk said. “Here - hold it out.” He doubled the bag and handed it back. Piers glanced up, meeting the clerk’s gaze and mouthed a thank-you.

“That happen to you in the line?” Tall Tale asked.

Piers nodded.

“Holy shit, son,” Shotgun shouldered the weapon on his other arm, stared incredulously at his scars.

“Kid’s a hero,” Chris said then, his voice low. “Saved my life. Saved alotta lives out there.”

“No kiddin’... fuck,” Sidekick Stereotype said. He adjusted his hat and then thought better of it - taking it off completely.

Following suit, the rest of the men - even the clerk - took off their hats.

Piers felt his face flushing. He looked down and waited for Chris.

Someone thumped him on the back, appreciative. “You boys need anything - help cleanin’ that shithole up... a beer... whatever... come on down here and ask, ya hear?” Tall Tales said.

“Thanks.” Chris shook hands with him then. “We’ll be around.”

* * *

 

“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” He asked as the Jeep struggled. The incline of the road was hard on the Old Dog and Chris worked it gently, plying the engine with soft shifts.

Piers shook his head.

“Bet you could catch more than a few pretty girls with your story,” Chris teased. “Ladies love a wounded soldier... Nothin’ drops panties faster.”

Piers pulled off the ballcap and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m good. Been so long... I dunno if I’d even know what to do with a girl now.”

Chris looked over at him and then back to the road. “You said you got an ex-wife?”

Piers laughed - a burst. “Yeah.”

Chris gestured for more. “... And?”

“And... we got married when she was eighteen... I was nineteen... Divorced two years ago.” He hung onto the roll bar.

“What happened?” Chris pried.

Piers cleared his throat. “Well... she met this guy at school... Out-grew me, I guess.”

Chris nodded and then he left it alone.

* * *

 

“So... am I right... or am I right?”

The pinks and yellows of the mountain sunset dripped down between the broad leaves and ancient trunks of oaks and black walnuts. Around the little cabin, the overgrown property sprouted thick bouquets of purple musk thistle flowers.

The house itself grew up like a weed on a little mound in the middle of a clearing. Chris had only mentioned the ten acres, mostly a steep run-off into the wooded valley below. The sun bled out over the grass and trees and all of it truly took on the appearance of some earthly paradise - everything gilded gold, red, and orange as far as the eye could see.

Piers smiled, but the skin around his mouth tugged unnaturally and so he stopped. “It’s real pretty, sir.”

“Call me that again... I’ll knock you on your ass,” Chris replied. He hefted a few of their bags over a shoulder and started up through the knee-high grass to the cabin. Romero ran excited circles around the Jeep and then down the unpaved driveway and then it was silent, except for the crunch of gravel under his boots.

Piers looked up. A copper-yellow leaf fell from the top of an oak, a slow-motion descent to the ground.

It felt like home.

* * *

 

The nights in the mountains were dark. There was no light - only sad blinking stars and rolling gray clouds, heavy with fall rain. The air was so clear and cold that it almost hurt to breathe. Chris had told him so. And he was right.

On the porch, Piers listened to the hooting of an owl and stared off into the pitch black. He pulled the flannel blanket tight across his shoulders and let his head rest on the back of the rickety bench swing. The chain links, rusted and worn, squealed with each pass he made - one of his bare feet pushing off the floorboards lazily.

He closed his eyes and the owl called deep into the night.

The screen door creaked open and Chris stepped out. Piers sat up, wincing.

Chris took a swig from a can and rubbed his nose. He stared off at the shadows of mountains. “What do you think?”

Piers smiled in the dark. “I like it.”

“Needs a lot of love.”

“Yeah.”

“Gonna take time. And work. Blood, sweat, tears. All that. It’ll be worth it though... It’ll heal.”

“It will.”

“You’re up for it?”

Piers hesitated. He realized they might not be talking about the house anymore.

Chris walked to the edge of the porch, his hand on the railing of the rotting steps. He ran careful fingers over the aged wood - loving, gentle. Piers could almost feel them on his own skin. “We can do this, kid... We’ll do this together."


End file.
